Time Management

Everyone’s writing but me;

they eat with laptops open on restaurant tables,

occupy all the park benches,

cranking out something –       

              novels?       

              short stories?       

              maybe letters to the editor?

I don’t know. 

What I do know is it’s my commitment to write

and I have to admit it hasn’t been easy because

when it comes to writing

my life always becomes busy… 

Right now

I realize that girl over there who can eat dinner and type simultaneously

is making me look bad –

my laptop sleeps in my backpack,

and here I am writing short poems on ruled paper

because forty-five minutes just doesn’t

seem time worth booting it up. 

What kind of writer am I?

Form follows function.

It’s an architectural maxim that says a building’s looks should be predominately determined by the function of that building.  It’s the architectural way of saying that you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.  But some designers can’t leave well enough alone and feel the need to over-embellish, try to make their projects something they aren’t -- like hanging too many ornaments on a Christmas tree.  There is an elegant effectiveness found in simplicity.  Compare the interior of a traditional martial arts dojo with Elvis’ Graceland.  I rest my case.

But I’m not writing this essay about architecture.  I’m writing about the simple elegance, the shibumi, of the martial arts.  Too many times, practitioners – particularly the less experienced – want to embellish what is there, much to the detriment of the art.  These arts were formed by a millennium of alchemy, in which the impurities, the things that were superfluous or simply didn’t work, were burned off in the process of finding the precious core.  Like nature, it evolved and is still in the process of evolution.  We shouldn’t attempt to add anything to such a thing of beauty.  At least not consciously.

Unconsciously, we cannot help but add our own subtle nuances to the art over our years of continual practice.  Our collective learning process has passed it on from student to teacher and it continually bears the stamp of our collectivity over time.  That’s why it evolves, even as we try to maintain what we perceive it to be.  It changes even though we try to preserve it.  That in itself is a Zen koan.

“The way…who will pass it on straight and well?”
Gichen Funakoshi

Funakoshi himself changed many things about the art of Okinawa Te in order to popularize it to the Japanese.  But he also strove to protect and keep what he felt was its immutable core.

Form follows function.

I see students attempt to embellish kata when they really don’t yet have a solid understanding of what they are doing.  Understanding the bunkai oyo, the applications of the kata, helps us to understand that embellishment is unnecessary, whereas practical knowledge is essential.  It is true that some applications are hidden within the movement of the kata.  In Goju-ryu, for example, there are instances where what is shown is the polar opposite of the intended application; a holdover from the days of secret practices when what was shown was purposely meant to confuse any rivals or enemy who might be watching.

But predominately, form does follow function, and breaking kata down reveals the simplicity beneath the surface, simplicity so elegantly effective, we need only to work to understand it, not to embellish it.  Embellishment seems to come from our insecurity about comprehension.  When in doubt, add something.  I would advise that when in doubt, dig deeper into the simplicity of the movement.

The best practitioners perform many linked, simple movements with such fluid grace that they appear to be complex.  The novice thinks it cannot be simple, because of the appearance of complexity, and therefore attempts to add flourish to his own performance.  That is like trying to add a moon roof to the evolved lines of a cuneiform.  

The same thing happens in kumite.  The best fighters often do quite simple things very well.  It is the fluidity of their linked movements, just as in kata, that appears to be more complex than what is really happening.  The founders of karatedo realized that movements requiring anything other than gross motor skills would be ineffective under the adrenaline dump of true combat.  Therefore, they kept moves simple.  The effectiveness comes from the continual practice that internalizes these simple but effective response movements until they appear to be both complex and effortless.   They are neither.  They are actually simple moves practiced continually with focused effort. That is the only way.

So next time you feel the urge to make your kata a little prettier, or your kumite more flashy, take a breath and look for the beauty of the simplicity.  Keep it simple but deep.

Yours in the Martial Arts,

James Pounds

Excerpt - Novel in Progress

I am attracted to violence from wherever it is that I come. If it is violence against the whites I am drawn to it like a bee to spring flowers. Like a coyote to weaker prey.

My tipi is the only one, a lonely sentinel. I am standing in a small bare space in front of the entry flap, in that space I dance with myself when loneliness becomes unbearable. A long slope flows away beyond me to the east, a carpet of wild grasses swaying in the wind, and on clear days the distant peaks of the Ouachitas are gray shadows low against the sky, easily mistaken for smoke trails except they hang without moving. Today I watch ragged chevrons of geese heading away from the snowy lands, cutting the sky like a canoe prow. I am lonely for my people but I cannot find them, so I spend long days in silence. Within this silence I hear many things that I never heard from within the company of others.

Did you know sand has a voice?

It is true. Sand sings in a constant keening sound, as does the prairie grass. The grass calls to the buffalo as well as the field mice, whereas the sand calls for water. The wind sings many songs, depending upon the season and whether drought or rainy. Rain grass sings with a joy whereas dry grass sounds like the crying of a hungry infant. The spirits have taught me to listen with the ears within my head and not the ears that are pierced with silver hoops. These are the things the elders should teach us, but no one ever taught me these things. The reason, I have come to believe, is that they did not know. I believe unknown spirits have adopted me, have chosen to teach me of the many things that live just beneath the surface of what can be seen, or felt, or touched. What can be seen is a river; what cannot be seen are fish.

I am standing in front of my solitary tipi with its beautiful lightning patterns, looking toward the distant mountains as I decipher the songs of the grasses, when I hear the first shots. They are so far away as to almost be hidden by the song of wind and grass. But I know too well the sound of gunfire, so I cock my head toward the direction from which it comes, and ask the world to stop singing for just a moment, if it does not mind. If I close my eyes and ignore other songs, I can turn in slow circles until I feel the direction of origin within my belly. And now I am like an eagle skimming above the world at a great speed, just above treetops and hills, drawn like a buzzard to the scent of blood.

Flight and Landing

I feel this human's warm hand, rescuing me from the past eon of repose in the damp sand of the lake bank. Oh, God, that warmth is nice.

Now I'm flying, spinning through cool air, spinning sparks of sunlight from my crystals as I soar,
exulting in the sensation that I, a flat rock, am feeling this moment.

Oh, please let this last. Let this last. Oh, please let...

I am the rock, the splash, myself, the water,
again again again,
slowing now,
warm on top wet and cold on bottom;
stalled into equilibrium,
sinking waffling back and forth as the light fades
from green to black to depths remembered in the crystal heart of my being
buried before, those millions of years.

I settle to the bottom and weep.

calculus

Lone Ranger, stranger:

kids grown and gone

not even a smoke signal; the

wife has taken her vow of silence,

face in a laptop screen or

asleep on the distant mesa of our

Ponderosa bed:

                This is the BIG Country.

Thirty million buffalo slaughtered

like my creativity, like those

wild Indians who couldn't

conform and died

not trying.  Abandoned bones

lay white in the elements,

worth more as fertilizer:

                the economics of resurgency.

Time passes

and time will tell where this life

is migrating as I strive to link the trajectory of

railroads creeping from east and west,

bisecting  the herd of my great ideas

yet never connecting at all;

relentlessly continuing toward manifest destiny

with the logic of those useless formulas

they taught us

in calculus.

dinosaurs

 

Paul Simon and the Africans thump

from ear to ear through my head;

coffee the color of streams in flood

pulsates like those water glasses in Jurassic Park

each time my foot taps to the beat:

continuous concentric circles

to mimic my own energies . . .

dinosaurs have breached the fence.

                Beyond the storefront windows the

                enduring blue of summer holds the world

                in place for one more day, not yet noon,

                pure robin blue to be washed grey later by heat.

                Everyone would like to write all day in

                refrigerated air, but then life

                would be too easy . . .

                they think.

Easy. . .

The word rolls from my thoughts

while writing, occasionally glancing

at the shimmer of summer women -- 

sparkly haired and sunny  circulating about my

island of refuge, casting oblique shy smiles

capable of keeping the raptors  at bay

a few moments more.